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Russian MP: Nadezhda Savchenko’s hunger-strike is fake

The leader of Russia’s Liberal Democratic Party Vladimir Zhirinovsky doubts Savchenko's hunger-strike as he says "she is literally blooming! Full-blooded and buxom"

Nadezhda Savchenko Valery Matytsin/TASS

Nadezhda Savchenko

© Valery Matytsin/TASS

MOSCOW, March 4. /TASS/. The leader of Russia’s Liberal Democratic Party Vladimir Zhirinovsky suspects that the hunger-strike declared by former Ukrainian military servicewoman, Nadezhda Savchenko, currently standing trial in Russia, is a fake.

Savchenko on March 3 said she would not take food or water to protest the Donetsk court’s refusal to let her make the final statement.

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"That’s a flagrant lie. How many times has she declared hunger-strikes? Where do you see a hunger-strike? She is literally blooming! Full-blooded and buxom. Her hunger-strike is a fake. The real hunger strike puts one to death in a week, provided you take no food or water. Without food you would last two weeks at the most. And without water no more than a week. Just take a look at her. She can stand with no support at all and smile," Zhirinovsky told a news conference at TASS on Wednesday.

Savchenko is faced with charges under three articles of the Criminal Code, including murder. The investigators say that Savchenko, an officer of the Ukrainian armed forces, was adjusting artillery fire against the area of a road-block held by militias of the self-proclaimed Lugansk People’s Republic in June 2014. A camera crew of Russia’s TV and radio broadcaster VGTRK was in the area at the moment. Two TV journalists - Igor Kornelyuk and Anton Voloshin - were killed by a mortar shell explosion. Savchenko was put on trial on September 22 last year. Since July 25, 2015 Savchenko has been kept at a detention prison in Novocherkassk (30 kilometers from Rostov-on-Don and 150 kilometers away from the Donetsk city court) where she is brought for each session. Savchenko has spent in custody a total of 20 months. The prosecutor has asked the court to sentence her to 23 years in a standard security jail and a fine of 100,000 rubles.

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